Some HIV-infected patients, less than 1%, are able to resist it throughout their lives without treatment or long after treatment is stopped. Their body naturally limits the number of viral particles that develop there, sometimes so much that they are undetectable in the blood.
In any case, they retain enough CD4, the immune cells that the virus attacks, to fight off the opportunistic infections that characterize the transition to AIDS, and thus never get sick. Known since the 1980s, these so-called “elite controllers” patients are the subject of many studies; understanding what gives them this natural resistance to HIV could be the key to a new treatment or vaccine.
Researchers are beginning to understand these patients’ unique resistance mechanisms, particularly their CD8+ immune T cells, which can eliminate virus-infected CD4s. The others…
Source: Le Figaro
